It’s Tuesday and you know what that means?!?!?
MORE DOOM!!!
The first doom is past. Two dooms yet to come.
Revelation 9:12
Wow. Two more. Well let’s just see what we are talking about then.
The sixth Angel trumpeted. I heard a voice speaking to the sixth Angel from the horns of the Golden Altar before God: “Let the Four Angels loose, the Angels confined at the great River Euphrates.” The Four Angels were untied and let loose, Four Angels all prepared for the exact year, month, day, and even hour when they were to kill a third of the human race. The number of the army of horsemen was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard the count and saw both horses and riders in my vision: fiery breastplates on the riders, lion heads on the horses breathing out fire and smoke and brimstone. With these three weapons—fire and smoke and brimstone—they killed a third of the human race. The horses killed with their mouths and tails; their serpentlike tails also had heads that wreaked havoc.
Revelation 9:13-19
Ok, so clearly there is a lot of killin’ going on here. I don’t know if these are actual horse like animals. Remember John is seeing this in a vision. John is a first century fisherman turned evangelist. He may be describing some modern technologically advanced weapon. Or he may be describing something still unknown to our generation. But whatever it is, 1/3 of the remaining population is going to die.
So imagine your Facebook ‘Friend” list. Now imagine that 33% of that list get killed. (And NO, you don’t get to pick.) I don’t use that example to be maudlin or overly dramatic. These are real people with real friends and family that are going to die. Remember how the death of 3000 people affected our country in 2001? Remember how long that lasted? Well that’s basically what is going to happen here.
The remaining men and women who weren’t killed by these weapons went on their merry way—didn’t change their way of life, didn’t quit worshiping demons, didn’t quit centering their lives around lumps of gold and silver and brass, hunks of stone and wood that couldn’t see or hear or move. There wasn’t a sign of a change of heart. They plunged right on in their murderous, occult, promiscuous, and thieving ways.
Revelation 9:20-21
One out of every three people you know dies and life goes on just as before. If you think it can’t happen, you are fooling yourself. Often I have asked myself how these events from Revelation could play out just as they are foretold and the world not recognize what is going on. But just look at how these things happen today. Only the nuttiest of supposed Christians get any media attention. No normal, thinking follower of Christ shows up on TV talking about the ‘END TIMES’. It’s always some goof with a basement full of canned goods and ammunition. The body of Christ has allowed itself to be depicted as a cartoon. Some of this is our fault. Some is just the way the world works.
This is why we MUST talk about Revelation. Not to scare people to Jesus. But to open a dialogue where we admit that we do not know exactly what everything in this book means but that doesn’t mean it isn’t accurate, real and necessary.
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